


Slow Ascent

by Denebola_Leo



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Gift Fic, Not Beta Read, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:07:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21604219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Denebola_Leo/pseuds/Denebola_Leo
Summary: Sephiroth escaped the reactor with his life. But life after Shinra is looking up. For him, at least.
Relationships: Jenova and Sephiroth, Jenova/Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Slow Ascent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nautilusopus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nautilusopus/gifts).



> I kept getting stuck on this and I have no idea why. Anyway, if you're squeamish please don't read. I'm being very serious here. This isn't the wholesome, quirky horror of the Mountain Universe. This is more akin to Reunion.
> 
> Which is why it's being gifted to Squid, and because I get these ideas from reading The Number I.
> 
> Fuck I'm going to bed now

A month.    
  
Sephiroth had been on the run for a month. He had never felt so free in his life.

The cave he had found two weeks ago was deep enough to avoid detection from any Shinra operatives that would be looking for traces of him in the area. He wondered if they had any idea that he had found refuge in the wilds southwest of Nibelheim, but he was sure they would comb it eventually.

As he looked down at her face, Mother seemed gleeful at the thought.

“We should find something to eat,” he said as he peeked out of the mouth of the cave. “Yes, something small again.”

Sephiroth stalked out and into the forest, his emerald eyes scanning the trees for their quarry. A few leaves dropped to meet its siblings on the ground, the canopy giving way to grey skies and skeleton branches. The scent of dry vegetation rotting, rich earth, and a myriad of animals, hidden still, but not for long.

The wound that had marred his midriff was long healed. Mother knew how to fix it, it just took some time to pull everything back together. He wasn’t sure if that grunt still lived after he had stabbed him, but he would see to it that he would get his vengeance against the world regardless.   
  
At the right time, of course. Now was the time to grow.

Mother knew best.

As much as stealth was needed in the forest, he needed to be able to catch the scent of prey more. The sick and the young would be the easiest to pluck off, though the monsters of the area would be perfectly fine, too. He had found several Battery Caps in a small clearing, and each one was consumed, as if normal mushrooms.

Today found him a fluffier prey. At the edge of a clearing laid the entrance to a warren, the hole large enough for an arm to go through. Sephiroth brushed away what leaf litter was near, then slid a limb inside. It was dark and warm inside, the mild tremors caused by movement just beyond the bend, his hand creeping along the packed dirt surface.

Rustling, then his long fingers hooked onto his quarry. There was a scream as it kicked and clawed, and then as the rabbit was brought to the surface, it plunged its teeth into his arm. Again it did it, longer this time, then kept them sheathed in the flesh of its attacker.   
  
Then the arm bit back.

Pointed teeth clamped onto the rabbit’s neck, piercing through the shoulder bone with a crack. Its feet kicked frantically, causing its back to break. Soon after tendrils of flesh enveloped it, making it a part of Sephiroth’s arm. The squirming beneath his sealing skin slowly stopped, and the new mass began the process of redistributing itself elsewhere on his body.

“As with everything in time, you became a part of Mother.”

* * *

  
  


“This is pretty out of the way.”

“I just gotta hunch, alright? It’s not your place to question, anyway.”

A Soldier and a grunt walked through the forest, on the search for Sephiroth after his disappearance two months ago. The countryside had been combed through, the mountains picked apart, and now Shinra began to spread out further in a desperate search to find and either capture or eliminate the rogue general.

The Soldier scratched at his arm, near the elbow. He looked at a pine grove ahead, their branches still. “I know he’s here. I just know it,” he said through his helmet.

“Sir?”

“He’s here.” The Soldier hastened his pace. Twigs and dead leaves crunched underfoot.    
  
“He’s here.”   
  
_ Crunch crunch crunch _

“He’s here.”

_ Crunch crunch crunch _

“He’s here.”

_ Crunch crunch crunch _

“Sephiroth? Sephiroth!” The Soldier looked about the clearing he found himself in. “Come out, Sephiroth! I can hear you humming!”

“S-sir!” The grunt slowed down and caught his breath, rifle held firmly in his grip. “Did-did you see him, sir?”

“Itchy…”

“...Sir?”

“Itchy-itchy-itchy-itchy—” 

The Soldier was scratching at his arms frantically, the slightly pink skin growing raw. “Hot-itchy-hot-hothot-itchy—”

The grunt looked about helplessly. “S-sir, we should leave!”

“No. No, I need to stay here, the singing is pleasant, isn’t it?”

“I don’t hear anything.”

The Soldier shook his head. “There’s a song. It-it’s making me itch more.”

Duty waned and self-preservation took over, and the grunt sprinted back the way he came. He didn’t know what that black fluid was, but it was seeping out of the Soldier’s helmet, he had rubbed the skin of his arms an ugly red, and he didn’t want to end up like that. The forest was cursed, that had to be why.

A scream of gibberish cut through the still air, then cut off before it could whine down.

Something slithered through the leaf litter towards him, making him trip. He let out a startled cry that was cut off when his chest hit the ground. He grabbed at the roots and earth in front of him, but froze when he saw the Silver General himself walk silently towards him with a smirk.

“Traitor,” he greeted. “Today, I will show you mercy. You will be a part of Mother.”

Suddenly he disappeared, as if he were just a mirage.

Wet noises behind him made him snap his head that way, and he let out a scream as an incomprehensible horror brought its moist, dirty tentacles closer to him. 

It was an ill shade of blue, and all manner of eyes and limbs and mouths lined its blob-like mass. There was an arm higher up, skinned and twitching, still wearing a familiar metal band on its wrist. A tentacle of flesh unfurled towards him, bursting into ribbons of foul smelling, greasy meat that clung to his exposed skin.    
  
Like fishing hooks, the tendrils dragged the thrashing grunt closer to it. The skin split open to reveal a pulpy stomach, watering with corrosive enzymes. Something akin to a tongue whipped out to wrap his ankle, hastening his demise. His screams were cut short as the mouth shut behind him, sealing itself again.   
  
Sephiroth rose from the putrid mound of flesh, a wing blossoming out of his back, glistening with wet feathers and eyes. The animal mass of the forest was his, and he could hear the call of Jenova’s cells in the distance.    
  
He called out to them.

* * *

  
  
One by one they marched, from Nibelheim towards the forest. Muttering to themselves and draped in black cloaks, the group continued onward, eyes a soulless green, their pupils slits, as a song that thrummed through their bodies took them to their Promised Land.


End file.
